It will be for the first time that India will host World Environment Day 2011 (WED) on June 5, 2011 in New Delhi. The theme of this year is ‘Forests: Nature at Your Service’ and it emphasises the intrinsic link between quality of life and the health of forests and ecosystems.

During the event, the 11th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will be held. It marks the beginning of an international decade for bio-diversity. It also proves India’s commitment towards biomass economy.

Two of India’s most prominent cities — Delhi and Mumbai — are the venues for this year’s global celebration of the environment. A myriad of activities will be organised to create awareness among masses regarding conservation of the environment. In order to conserve ecosystem, Government of India has initiated projects, which will keep track of the nation’s bio-diversity parks and other natural resources.

Emphasis will be laid to make people aware about how individual actions can have an impact, with a variety of activities ranging from tree-plantation drives to community clean-ups, car-free days, photo competitions on forests, bird-watching trips, city park clean-up initiatives, exhibits, green competitions, nationwide green campaigns and much more.

The Government of India is actively introducing programmes, which will ensure a clean environment for its people. India has also launched a Compensatory Afforestation Programme under which any diversion of public forests for non-forestry purposes is compensated through afforestation in degraded or non-forested areas.

For this programme, a body has been formed by the Central government to make environment conservation projects a success. India is one of the fastest emerging economies in the world.

However, India still continues to be the front runner in generating green technology. Amid all the discussions on green technologies, the Government of India has recently decided to conduct an assessment of the impact of GDP growth on ecology using Green Accounting System.

India is currently planning one of the largest green energy projects that will generate 20,000 MW of solar power and 3,000 MW from wind farms on 50,000 acres in Karnataka.

The first phase of the US$50 billion project will start in the year 2012.

This is underlined by India’s introduction of the Clean Energy Fund into its national budget, which provides subsidies for green technology and has been the basis for a National Action Plan on Climate Change, which sets specific targets on issues such as energy efficiency and sustaining the Himalayan eco-system.